So while some
may board the high speed train to future
Green Growth, others may be left at the
platform without a ticket.
What are the prospects
for small island states and for many smaller
economies on continents such as Africa,
Latin America and Asia?
Many of these still
require pre-investment assistance and capacity
building if they are to also enjoy economic
growth, and more importantly sustainable
Green Growth.
Business, in partnership
with the UN, governments and public finance
houses has an important role to play in
assisting the realization of a fairer and
more equitable world.
It also has a vested
interest in seeing markets for low carbon,
high tech investments flourish everywhere
and not just in a few nations.
A vested interest too
in seeing the sustainable and more intelligent
management of increasingly scarce natural
or nature-based resources-these will be
constraints over the coming decades if not
addressed.
Some Litmus Tests for
Climate and Cancun
In respect to climate
change, all eyes are now on the UN climate
convention meeting in Cancun, Mexico.
What are some of the
elements that can assist in ensuring the
meeting is a success.
The $30 billion-worth
of pledges need to be operationalized and
operationalized fast.
UNEP, working with nine
leading modeling centres, estimates there
remains a gap between the pledges and intentions
linked to the Copenhagen Accord and the
science.
Emissions in 2020 need
to be somewhere just over 40 billion tones
(Gt) of C02 equivalent if we are to realize
emission reductions by 2050 that keep a
temperature rise to 2 degrees C or less.
So, this gap needs to
be bridged between now and Cancun or in
Cancun itself.
Options include some
countries increasing their pledges upwards
to bringing sectors such as maritime and
shipping and aviation into the carbon and
emission trading markets.
Is Business Out in Front?
Business, either through
persuasion at the political level or through
actions on the ground-for example greening
their operations and their supply chains-can
contribute to such aims and the wider sustainability
challenge.
Indeed in some ways,
business is out in front.
It was suggested that
a failure to secure an international regime
in Copenhagen would be the death knell for
the carbon markets.
But the latest assessment
of the European emissions trading market
shows that despite this and in spite of
a fall in emissions linked with the recession,
the markets have proved remarkably resilient.
This should strengthen
the resolve of others contemplating such
markets with the ultimate aim of securing
a higher carbon price.
Indeed a recent assessment
of the proposed Kerry-Graham-Lieberman Senate
bill in the United States, says if it were
enacted in full the emissions trading market
there could be worth over $250 billion.
The price of carbon
could be over $30 a tonne between 2013 and
2020.
